PHILADELPHIA – When it came to whistling past the graveyard, the Dodgers didn’t hold back. When it came to looking for silver linings, they left no dark cloud unturned.

As they dressed in a virtually silent clubhouse following Game 2 of the National League Championship Series, an 8-5 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies in front of 45,883 on Friday at Citizens Bank Park, the Dodgers let loose with all the requisite cliches of a club that had just lost the first two games of a best-of-seven playoff:

They are going home; these games were closer than the final scores would indicate; the history of baseball’s postseason is rife with teams that have fallen behind 2-0 and stormed back to win.

“What we did (here) don’t mean (squat),” Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez said. “It just means we have to try to win some games and try to make some adjustments.”

All that reassurance, and self-assurance, aside, the Dodgers appear to be in serious trouble. As they were about to board a long, cross-country flight, a voyage that figured to include plenty of introspection and rationalization, they were suddenly faced with the sobering reality that their road to the World Series had taken a hairpin turn.

As a result, they now find themselves dangling from the edge of a cliff.

In order to complete the now-gargantuan task of knocking off the Phillies, a team that spent the past 48 hours proving itself to be the Dodgers’ superior in just about every facet of the game, the Dodgers must take at least two of the next three at Dodger Stadium. If they manage that, they then will have to take at least one game, and possibly two, back here next week, in a ballpark where they are now winless in six tries this season.

“It’s going to be challenging,” Dodgers third baseman Casey Blake said. “We’re in a tight spot right now, and we have to come out fighting. Nobody is questioning our effort or our will to win or our desire to win. But this makes it a little tougher.

“We’re going to come out ready to win. Weirder things have happened.”

For proof of that, no one had to look any farther than the office at the end of the room, the one belonging to first-year Dodgers manager Joe Torre.

Torre has a whopper of a story to tell about his 2004 New York Yankees club, the only team ever to win the first three games of a best-of-seven series and then drop the next four.

“I have heard about that one,” Dodgers first baseman James Loney said.

Loney and the rest of the Dodgers undoubtedly will hear about it again – and again and again – over the next couple of days as the team prepares to send rookie Hiroki Kuroda to the mound against veteran Jamie Moyer in Game 3 on Sunday night at Chavez Ravine.

They will also hear about Torre’s 1996 Yankees, who lost the first two games of that year’s World Series at home and didn’t lose again.

“It’s valuable for me because I can speak from experience,” Torre said. “Sometimes, when you’re in that locker room and in that lineup, you tend to think things are worse than they are. But you don’t get to this time of year without having the capabilities of winning three or four games in a row.”

When pointing that out to his team – which has now lost two meaningful games in a row for the first time since snapping an eight-game losing streak Aug. 30 – Torre might want to leave out this little tidbit: of the nine clubs that took a 2-0 lead in the NLCS since the series was expanded to best-of-seven in 1985, only one managed to blow it.

That would be the 1985 Dodgers, whose meltdown came against St. Louis.

Speaking of meltdowns, Chad Billingsley had one in the second inning of this game. With the Dodgers leading 1-0, two outs and nobody on, Phillies third baseman Greg Dobbs hit a bouncer up the middle that shortstop Rafael Furcal ran down but couldn’t corral. It was the first hit allowed by Billingsley, but it wouldn’t be the last.

The Phillies went on to score four runs in that inning, one of them on a single by light-hitting pitcher Brett Myers. They went on to score four more in the third, two of them on another single by Myers.

All eight of those runs were charged to a shellshocked Billingsley, who had no answer for what was happening and didn’t have much of an answer for those who came around to ask about it later.

“I didn’t throw inside enough, and they hit some good pitches,” Billingsley said. “I never could stop the bleeding.”

By contrast, Myers – whose three hits were one shy of his total for the regular season – pitched inside throughout a five-inning outing that was in no way dominating but was plenty adequate given that he was handed a six-run lead at one point. In the first inning alone, he knocked down Russell Martin with one pitch and threw another behind Ramirez’s head, but wound up striking out both of them.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt (Ramirez),” Myers said. “If I hit their best player, they are going to hit one of our best players, and I don’t want to get one of our players hurt.”

Myers later got swinging strikes on Loney and Matt Kemp when they turned too far with their bats in their hands while ducking out of the way of pitches. While it didn’t appear Myers was trying to come that close – he later said he was having trouble gripping the ball – the result was that the Dodgers appeared somewhat on their heels against him.

After falling behind 8-2, the Dodgers jumped back into the game on a three-run homer by Ramirez in the fourth, capping a two-out rally that began when Rafael Furcal reached first base on a wild pitch after striking out.

But the Dodgers wouldn’t score again on a day when they stranded 10 baserunners, half of them in scoring position.

Phillies closer Brad Lidge walked two of the first three batters he faced in the ninth, bringing the tying run to the plate. But he wound up striking out the side, including Nomar Garciaparra to finish it off, giving Lidge his 45 th save in 45 tries this season.